BusinessWeek: The Future of Apple

[chemistry_geek]

BusinessWeek has an article here:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/tc_special/apple.htm

about "The Future of Apple". A very intersting read with positive comments about Apple.

However, one of the links on the page is about the UNIX underpinings of Mac OS X. It says Apple ships Mac OS X with the firewall OFF, which is supposedly a bad thing. If this is true, how do I turn on the firewall?

 

[edX]

c_geek - click here to get Brickhouse which will help you set it up without using the terminal. I am not using it, since i have one built into my router but i have read other people talking about it in other threads. if you would like more hands on terminal control, i am sure someone else will stop by and help.

 

[fryke]

Well, it may be a bad thing to ship it and not turn it on, but then again every user wants this or that turned on or off in the firewall settings.

But also keep in mind that software firewalls do not really protect you from everything. As long as you haven't started any services you should be fine with Mac OS X out of the box. Most of todays exploits (the big ones anyway) are targetted at Windows NT and Linux servers. Of course Mac OS X has the same flaws as Linux when running the same server software. If, say, Apache has a big flaw in a version, then we'll also be affected. But as long as you run the thing as a network client only, this shouldn't bother you too much.

If you want to be on the safe side, you'll need a 'real' firewall that puts your machine one step further away from the net. For starters, a router that does NAT is a good idea. You don't really need a 'real' IP for most things. This is the default setting on AirPort Base Stations for example.

 

[rfraley]

Otherwise, why do you think that Apple ships OS 10.1 with almost all the ports closed.

Now all they need is a good front end for the firewall so you don't have to use the command line to adminsiter the firewall.